


the second interesting thing about angels

by earnshaws



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, Canon-Typical Trickery, Dubious Consent, General Relativity, M/M, Manipulation, Overstimulation, Shapeshifting, Size Difference, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 17:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17027022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnshaws/pseuds/earnshaws
Summary: “Did you— did you actually let me go?” Carter asked, cursing the slight waver in his voice.“I think,” said Nyarlathotep, sliding his hand around to cup Carter’s jaw, “that I would rather keep that information to myself.”Carter decided not to press him. “Back to the matter at hand,” he tried, doing his best to sound lessfearful,though his heart was racing like that of a far smaller creature. “I want back into the Dreamlands. Tell me what I have to do.”Nyarlathotep’s eyes glittered.





	the second interesting thing about angels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evandar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/gifts).



_"Oh, I apologize," said Vetinari. "I meant of course the hemp fandango. It is your choice, Mr Lipwig. There is always a choice, Mr Lipwig. Oh, and by the way...do you know the second interesting thing about angels?"_  
 _"What angels?" said Moist, angry and bewildered._  
 _"Oh, dear, people just don't pay attention," said Vetinari. "Remember? The first interesting thing about angels? I told you yesterday? I expect you were thinking about something else. The second interesting thing about angels, Mr Lipwig, is that you only ever get_ one _."_

— Terry Pratchett _, Going Postal_

 

The morning of Randolph Carter’s thirtieth birthday, he woke up in a panic.

He couldn’t— couldn’t quite put his finger exactly what it was, that let him know he could no longer get to the Dreamlands. It was certainly nothing tangible, or easily definable. The closest he could come to describing it was to say that it felt like leaving the house for the day knowing, just _knowing_ , that something is wrong— and then coming home to find the place in ruins because you left the stove on. He knew, in the way that he knew his own name and the first lines of the _Aeneid_ he’d had drilled into his head in primary school Latin, that the gossamer thread that bound him to the Dreamlands had been severed.

These things, one would think, are never quite so sudden. Growing up, for example, is not something that happens overnight: it is slow, gradual, a gentle turning of the seasons from childhood to not. One does not see it happening, in the same way one does not see the leaves change. The recognition of grown-up-ness might be sudden, certainly, sudden as when one awakens one morning in late October to find the world outside crisp and aflame in red and gold— yes, that realization might be that acute, but never the process itself.

And— it wasn’t as though Carter had never considered the possibility, of losing access to the Dreamlands. He had; had thought he’d come close, even, a few times before. The stress of sitting his doctoral exams had kept him awake at night, even when he couldn’t possibly work anymore; his mind, filled with all the dull and mundane administrative groundings of scholarship, couldn’t so much as let him sleep. Even so, the evening after he defended his dissertation, he’d come home, collapsed on the couch, and spent an entire week wandering the Skai plain, reacquainting himself gratefully with the world he had feared he’d lost.

That had taught him to be more careful. Disengaged from the stress of the world, treating the Dreamlands less as a relief from the trials of the day and more as a blessing unto itself. Over time it came to pass, in that steady and gradual way culminating in a sharp moment of recognition, that it was more dear to him than his life awake, as it had been when he was a child. Scholarship could only furnish him with the smallest and faintest of gas-lamps with which he might dispel the darkness that he was beginning to realize surrounded so much of the world; could only bring him so far along the path of knowing, bounded both by his own intellectual limitations (he was first to admit that most of mathematics was a mystery to him) and by the borders of the physical world. Feet on the ground, head tilted back to the stars, there was only so much to see. And he was no scientist, no genius, true, but— but he had something _better_ , something none of the men and women he studied for a living could have dreamt of: a tenuous thread to other worlds. In those years, Carter realized for the first time how immeasurably precious that thread was. When he read Voltaire for post-doctoral work, he felt a guilty smugness at the _philosophe_ ’s imaginings of planets and beings outside the realm of human knowing. Where Voltaire could only speculate, he could _explore_.

It was, in truth, a heady thing— to count himself more gifted than all those who had come before him, to know with a giddy certainty that where they had had only candles, he had a floodlight, a powerful tool to dispel the darkness and bring light to that which was unknown. When he ventured outside the known realms of the Dreamlands, he began to take blank field notebooks with him, and draw maps and sketches of the regions and creatures he encountered, noting down detailed descriptions as if he were Darwin in the Galapagos. Upon visiting the venerable libraries in the great capitals of Celephais and Ilek-Vad, he sought out manuscripts on everything from literature to natural philosophy, and took down information on those too. When he woke, clutching the notebooks it had taken nearly all his strength to carry back with him, he would carefully label them and shelve them in a locked cabinet. What he planned to do with them he had not the faintest idea, but somehow he felt responsible for recording this strange and wondrous place, for doing his own small part to dispel the darkness.

(Carter— well, he would be lying if he said that was his only motivation, and if he had never fantasized about publishing something in the manner of the _Lettres philosophiques_ , a sort of explanatory travelogue of a brave new world. A headline in the _Globe_ , some sort of prestigious academic award, and perhaps even tenure, which was notoriously hard to come by at Miskatonic. He would not say no to being hailed as a nineteenth-century Newton, certainly— but he’d settle for a full-size office of his own, rather than the piteous basement cubbyhole he currently occupied.)

It was not really a difficult logical leap, from the possession of such unprecedented illumination to something that looked dangerously like hubris. Hence— he thought, at least— the suddenness of his being thrown out.

He knew— he _did_ , all right, he wasn’t entirely stupid— that searching out the gods was, at best, a risky proposition. He knew that full well. They might hide themselves from him, cause him to while away years searching, trapping him in a strange limbo; they might smite him on the spot for having the gall to try, when they’d so clearly denied him; worst of all, they might take an interest in him, as he’d heard gods are wont to do with dreamers, and keep him for themselves. But he’d been unable to get the image of the city out of his mind, and— and besides, was he not now above Kepler and Newton, above Voltaire, above all those men who had dreamed before him? He was a master-dreamer now, wasn’t he, at the young age of twenty-nine? Surely if they were going to grant the petition of any human at all, it would be him.

If he could, Carter would kick his past self in the shin. As it is, all he could do was pace the corridors of his townhouse, try to ignore the delicate strains of carollers’ voices drifting through the narrow streets of Beacon Hill from the Common, and fume.

He thought— he thought he knew why, specifically, he’d been locked out. Hubris had led him into the circumstances where he’d made his ultimate error, but it was only the trigger of his misfortune, not in itself the cause. No, that had been his run-in with Nyarlathotep— more precisely, his escape _from_ Nyarlathotep.

At first, Carter was slightly less regretful about that— proud of it, even, in a small remain of the hubris for which he’s been berating himself for the past week. (Old habits die hard.) He’d managed to best an Outer God (though if he was being entirely honest with himself “best” was a somewhat overconfident way to refer to “flee in terror from”), and not only that, he’d survived to tell the tale. With his sanity! Even if he was paying the price for it now.

Over the intervening days, though, that pride had begun to turn in on itself, evolving from relief to be alive, to a bone-deep grief at the loss of his connection to a world that seemed more real than this one, to anger. To fury, at this point. Carter had— he’d done nothing, _nothing_ , to offend Nyarlathotep himself. Nothing at all! If anyone was going to punish him for his hubris, it ought to be the gods he’d rebelled against in the first place. Not once had he shown one ounce of disrespect to Nyarlathotep, even when that was...difficult, considering the god’s apparent disregard for petty human concepts such as “personal space” and “blatant condescension as an impoliteness.” How _dare_ he deprive Carter of his link to the Dreamlands! They were where he _lived_ , now, more even than the waking world! He had no grounds to do such a thing!

Precisely a week after the horrible realization that he could no longer dream, Carter found himself in the Crowley Rare Books Library at Miskatonic, hunting for a manuscript.

Though his fields of study these days were a bit more...unconventional than what he’d done his doctoral dissertation on, the skills he’d gained during that research process he still finds extraordinary useful. It took him only about a day and a half to dig through the card catalog and follow the trail of mentions in various thirteenth-century Latin texts on metaphysics and the occult to the title of the book he needed. Locating the item itself— _De evocatione daemoniorum et talium spiritus malorum—_ took a bit more work, but before the end of the next day he’d found it, tucked away in a Harvard branch library in Kendall.

The librarian was a bespectacled older man, taller than Carter (though that wasn’t exactly uncommon) with a hawkish scowl on a surprisingly weathered face. He fixed Carter with a stern stare as he checked the book out for him, and Carter shifted his weight back and forth uncomfortably, fearful that the librarian knew what he was up to and might decide to call in one of the experts in the occult on the faculty to make sure that his plans were on the up-and-up. (Which they weren’t.) But the man gave him no trouble beyond a lingering gaze of disapproval as Carter shoved the book ungracefully into his bag and headed out into the chill evening, a dusting of snow beginning to fall upon the city.

That night was cold, colder than normal for this time of year— the temperature dipped almost down to zero as the sun set and the snow began to pile up outside his window. Normally Beacon Hill was beautiful in the wintertime, chill and bright with all the trappings of Christmas, but that night the snow seemed to muffle light and sound alike, blanketing the whole neighborhood with a dark, hushed stillness. In the unnatural quiet, Carter worked feverishly from the book, drawing shapes alien and familiar in chalk on his floorboards, until the pattern taking shape on the well-trod wood began to resemble the faded drawings on the parchment. The text was tremendously old— tenth century, perhaps— and mostly a compendium of classical sources otherwise lost to time. It had a vaguely Catholic flavor, veiling its instructions as protocols for the summoning of demons, but that was common for the time and beneath it Carter could discern the contours of a far more tangible craft. He wondered briefly at the sheer age of the words he was reading, and wasted a moment worrying if they would _work_ , after such an intervening length of time— but then chased the thought away with the reminder that for beings like the ones specified in the text, a thousand years was but a blink of an eye. Less, even. Carter shivered.

It didn’t take long, considering, for Carter to finish preparations. He kept a surplus stock of candles in the linen closet— a habit left over from his years with Harley— as well as a couple of the nicer ceremonial knives he’d managed to acquire in almost a decade of practice. Lighting the candles took a fair bit of caution in a seventeenth century house with a burn time of perhaps a minute, and he had to clean some rust off of the most promising-looking knife, but by the time the clock struck eleven-fifty-five Carter stood in the middle of a concentration of chalk sigils, strange non-Euclidean things with forms that hurt to look at for too long. In his left hand he held the book; in his right, the de-rusted knife.

The minutes ticked on towards midnight, and Carter, in the last few moments of the dying day, began to recite aloud.

For a tenth century text the Latin was surprisingly lyrical, almost Ciceronian in its satisfying symmetry, and Carter found that it flowed off his tongue with ease. Something about borderlands and boundaries, gods of the space between this life and the next. It was all rather tame, until Carter arrived at a _very_ Catholic passage about sacrifice, and blood as wine for the drinking. He tucked the book under his arm, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and drew the knife across the crook of his elbow, trying not to let his hand shake.

The warm rush of blood down his forearm almost made Carter faint then and there, but he was thankfully able to recall the correct position his palm needed to be in so that the blood would drip onto the proper spot in the sigil complex. He continued chanting with his eyes closed, the Latin coming to him with a naturalness far beyond what he should have been able to remember, but— that was normal, in these sorts of things. The ritual took over entirely, and a good occultist was one who knew when to let it move him without resistance, and when to fight back with everything he had.

Carter couldn’t have fought this if he wanted to. The chant carried him along as though it were a vast river and he were a speck of matter too small to see. Now it was about the history of the Earth, all the races that had preceded humans, and all those that would come after; now about the hierarchy of the cosmos; now about something Carter couldn’t even catch the thread of, though he comprehended the Latin with perfect clarity. He listened to his own voice speak foreign words with such riveted fascination that it came as more of a detached surprise than anything else when he noticed that he could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet, nor the action of gravity on his body. It felt vaguely as though he were being carried, though he had no idea by who or what. This ought to have caused him alarm, but if he had learned one thing from Harley it was to never, _ever_ stop in the middle of a ritual. Resolving himself to see it through to the end, Carter kept his eyes firmly closed and continued to speak— or, more accurately, to allow himself to be spoken through.

Eventually, Carter felt himself nearing the end of the passage he was meant to recite. He still felt as though he were adrift, and an odd tingling sensation was beginning to make its way through his body, spreading outwards from the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t painful or unpleasant, just...strange, and he had to resist the urge to open his eyes to check if he was still in one piece. He thought better of it, though— what he might see would likely distract him, snap him out of his trance. As badly as he wanted to find out just where he was, he closed his eyes tighter and kept a firm grip on the knife he still clutched in his left hand.

It ended up being timed quite precisely. As soon as the last words left Carter’s lips he felt his feet hit solid ground— hit it rather hard, in fact, so that despite his efforts to absorb the shock he ended up nearly falling over, stumbling and pinwheeling his arms in a decidedly ungraceful fashion. For a moment keeping his balance was the only thing in his mind, and he didn’t even think to open his eyes. He did, however, notice that it was cold, drafty in a way even his badly heated house in Boston wasn’t. Carter shivered, pulling his cardigan closer around him, and finally summoned the courage to open his eyes.

Oh. It was— oh. Carter would have recognized that high, mist-clouded ceiling anywhere.

All the fear he’d felt the last time he’d been to Kadath, that sense of immense smallness at being confronted with a place so clearly meant for something _other_ , came flooding back in an instant, and the edges of his vision began to turn threateningly black and fuzzy. Carter swayed on his feet, fighting to stay conscious.

“Hello again, Randolph Carter.”

In front of him, predictably, was Nyarlathotep, sat on an onyx throne that curved in strange and incomprehensible shapes that made Carter’s eyes ache when he tried to focus on them. Like last time, he was in a human form, dressed in flawless imitation of an Egyptian pharaoh— double crown, linen skirt, dazzling pearlescent robes that flowed from his perfectly poised shoulders to the polished floor. Gold and ruby jewelry gleamed on his wrists and fingers and neck, glowing with what seemed like an inherent light. Unlike last time, this form was of a scale with the rest of the castle, so that the throne he sat on seemed as tall as a skyscraper, and Carter had to tilt his head back to meet his amused gaze.

Somehow, inexplicably, all the fear that Carter felt melted away at the sight of the expression on Nyarlathotep’s face, replaced with pure, concentrated fury— fury at what Nyarlathotep had done to him, fury at being snatched from his home without his consent during what should have been a simple summoning, and now fury at the way Nyarlathotep was _looking_ at him, as though he had anticipated everything Carter had done and felt since being locked out, and was nothing but delighted at seeing him again. If he could have, Carter would have smacked him across the face right then and there, consequences be damned. As it was, he settled for glaring up at Nyarlathotep with what he hoped was impressive fearlessness, folding his arms tight across his chest.

“Nothing to say?” Nyarlathotep grinned, and Carter noticed that his teeth were closer to those of a shark than those of a human— pointed and interlocking, and sharp as knives. “You went to all the trouble of summoning me, and I thought I’d do you the courtesy of granting you a proper audience. Isn’t there something you wanted to ask me?”

“You—” Carter started, and then stopped. He couldn’t think of a word vitriolic enough to use.

“Yes?” Nyarlathotep looked as though he were barely suppressing a laugh. “What about me, Randolph Carter?”

Carter opened his mouth to try and respond, but before he could Nyarlathotep was leaning down, reaching towards him. He moved so quickly that Carter had no time to react before Nyarlathotep’s fingers closed around the back of his collar and he was lifted unceremoniously into the air. Carter shrieked and struggled, lashing out blindly with his knife, but he couldn’t reach Nyarlathotep at all and was in no state to hold onto it anyway. It slipped from his hand and fell to the floor, far below by now, its clatter so distant as to barely be audible. Carter tried very hard not to look down as Nyarlathotep held him up to eye level.

“I figured it might be easier for us to have a conversation like this,” said Nyarlathotep, grinning wider. “You must get tired of looking up at people, hm?”

Carter narrowed his eyes and tried his best to still himself, despite the delirious pounding of his heart. “Put me _down_ ,” he managed, though his voice was despicably high and breathy from fear.

“I don’t think I’ll do that, as a matter of fact. You look awfully cute like this.”

Despite himself, Carter felt the blood rush to his face. “What do you want with me?” he asked, trying to distract Nyarlathotep from the way he was _looking_ at Carter, as though he couldn’t decide whether to stick a pin through Carter’s stomach and put him on display, or swallow him whole right then and there.

“I think the question might be what do _you_ want with _me_ , rather,” murmured Nyarlathotep, studying Carter intently. Carter resisted the urge to squirm in discomfort at his gaze. “After all, you summoned me.”

Carter swallowed. “You locked me out of the Dreamlands.”

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Nyarlathotep’s tone was infuriatingly frank. “As I recall, it was because you refused to obey the will of the gods of Earth.”

“How did I _refuse—_ you know what, that’s irrelevant. I won’t hold a conversation with you like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” Carter gestured vaguely about himself. “Put me down, and then we can talk.”

“I just told you I wasn’t going to do that.” Nyarlathotep pressed his lips together, as though he were barely keeping himself from laughing. “What’s wrong with this? I would have thought it’d be uncomfortable for you to crane your neck up at me, no?”

“It’s humiliating.”

“Oh?” Nyarlathotep’s lip quirked in amusement, and before Carter could so much as respond he found himself upside down, held tightly by his left ankle. Nyarlathotep smiled at him sweetly, and Carter felt the blood rush to his face, both from anger and from being constrained in such a position. “How about this?”

Carter folded his arms tighter across his chest and glared, refusing to speak.

“All right, all right. I apologize. That was immature of me. Would you like me to put you down, little human?”

Carter nodded, forcing himself not to respond to the diminutive. Nyarlathotep raised an eyebrow, apparently impressed at Carter’s restraint, and in the blink of an eye Carter was back on the ground. Nyarlathotep, now the same size he’d been when Carter had first seen him on Kadath, stood in front of him, that immutable smile playing about his lips. His throne was nowhere to be seen. The transition was a profoundly strange thing; it seemed as though, rather than actual movement, reality had simply changed, reforming itself to Nyarlathotep’s will in a single instant.

“Is that better?” Nyarlathotep asked, looking down at Carter— he was still unnaturally tall, and Carter was in any case rather short, but at least now they were on the same physical plane.

“Yes, thank you.” Carter made an effort to stand up as straight as he could, despite the dizziness the size of the room had induced in him. As small as it made him feel, the endless expanse of this place, looking at Nyarlathotep even now it seemed as though he was perfectly fitted for it, as though the sense of diminishment Carter felt pressing down on him from every direction had no effect at all on the god. Carter couldn’t explain it.

“Good. Now, why precisely did you want to see me?”

“I— I thought you knew.”

“I do,” said Nyarlathotep. “But I’d like to hear you say it.”

Carter swallowed. “You locked me out of the Dreamlands, like I said. I want to go back.”

“Is that so,” Nyarlathotep murmured, reaching out and tilting up Carter’s chin with forefinger and thumb. Carter bit his lip, but didn’t resist. “What makes you think I’d be acquiescent? After all—” his hand tightened, and Carter felt the sharp press of nails on his skin— “I did try to kill you.”

“Did you?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I thought—” Carter’s voice died in his throat, and he realized in an odd, detached way that he was trembling, very slightly. “I thought you might have let me go on purpose.”

“Really.” Nyarlathotep laughed, a beautiful, melodious sound that nevertheless grated on Carter’s ears like the staticky buzz of rogue electricity. “You don’t think highly enough of yourself to believe that you might be able to escape an Outer God?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

Nyarlathotep laughed again. “Fair enough.”

“Did you— did you actually let me go?” Carter asked, cursing the slight waver in his voice.

“I think,” said Nyarlathotep, sliding his hand around to cup Carter’s jaw, “that I would rather keep that information to myself.”

Carter decided not to press him. “Back to the matter at hand,” he tried, doing his best to sound less _fearful_ , though his heart was racing like that of a far smaller creature. “I want back into the Dreamlands. Tell me what I have to do.”

Nyarlathotep’s eyes glittered.

Carter shook, despite himself, and Nyarlathotep grinned when he felt the tremor through the hand on Carter’s chin. Too quickly for Carter to react, Nyarlathotep reached an arm around his back and pulled Carter in close, so roughly that Carter stumbled and caught himself against Nyarlathotep, palms flat against his chest. When Carter looked up, held too closely to move, Nyarlathotep was staring down at him with an expression of unmitigated delight.

“What are you—”

At which point Nyarlathotep bent him so far backwards that his feet left the ground and kissed him on the mouth.

It had been— been a while, since Carter had last been kissed, and in any case, it had never been like _this_. Richard had been clumsy and overeager; Harley, on the opposite extreme, had been far too gentle, cautious to the point of gingerness. Nyarlathotep displayed no such trepidation. His motions were smoothly domineering, firm and authoritative without being overly rough; it felt, somehow, as though he already knew Carter— as though Nyarlathotep had kissed him enough times previously to memorize exactly what to do, where to put his hands to make Carter open up to him, how and how tightly to hold him so that Carter couldn’t have pulled away if he wanted to.

Which he didn’t, not really. It was profoundly stupid, Carter knew, and he knew he _should_ deny whatever desperately affection-starved part of him was enjoying himself and bolt as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It was, of course, entirely possible that Nyarlathotep would simply recapture Carter and have his way with him, but it was also possible that Nyarlathotep would acquiesce, and send him back home— thwarted, and no closer to regaining the Dreamlands, but alive and intact. There was surely nothing to be lost by at least making an _attempt_ to escape, was there? If Nyarlathotep ever put him down, that was.

“I would recommend against running,” Nyarlathotep murmured against his lips, pulling away momentarily and pressing his hand more tightly into Carter’s back. His nails, razor-sharp even through the thick fabric of Carter’s sweater, dug into the skin, and Carter winced. “I won’t let you go so easily, little dreamer.”

Carter stared up at him, wide-eyed. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Nyarlathotep might be able to read his mind.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself.” Nyarlathotep grinned. “Not many people consider that I might be able to know them that intimately, but it makes sense, don’t you think? Yes, you do think, I can hear it. What—” and here he swung Carter into his arms fully, bridal-style, with an effortless, seamless grace that belied his inhumanity— “a lovely mind you have, Randolph Carter. It’s quite unique. I’m rather inclined to treat it delicately, so as not to break it. An uncommon courtesy for me, I know, but I would say you merit it, wouldn’t you?”

Nyarlathotep walked as he spoke, a regal and unhurried stride that seemed entirely undisturbed by Carter’s weight in his arms. Carter got the feeling that to Nyarlathotep, he was lighter than a feather, small and easily manipulable. He shivered and pushed his glasses up, a nervous habit he’d acquired years ago from Joel. “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere a bit more...appropriate,” answered Nyarlathotep.

“For _what_?”

Nyarlathotep looked down at Carter in amusement, and Carter tried his best to project at least _some_ sense of dignity, though he probably ended up just glaring. “What do you think, little dreamer?”

Carter blushed furiously.

“Exactly.” At some point, they’d crossed the vast expanse of the throne room floor and made it to the wall. A door swung open in front of them as if by magic, and Nyarlathotep strode through it, heels clicking efficiently on the polished floor. Looking around, Carter saw that they were in a part of the palace he’d not seen his first time there— it was clearly built for creatures of the size Nyarlathotep was now, a bit larger than ordinary humans, but not on the titanic scale of the rest of the place. The hall was black onyx, floor to wall to ceiling, with golden braziers of green flame casting it in an uncanny light. It seemed endless, twisting and branching at strange angles that the mental map Carter was attempting to surreptitiously create couldn’t hope to accommodate.

“I told you not to think about running,” said Nyarlathotep sweetly, stopping at a seemingly unremarkable point along the hallway and turning so that he faced the wall. He murmured something Carter didn’t understand, some word in a strange, guttural language, and the wall ground apart, flowing away from itself like water. Carter shivered at the strange noise it made, at once fluid and grating, as Nyarlathotep carried him inside.

Really, Carter should have expected to be taken to somewhere like this, but the sight of what was clearly Nyarlathotep’s bedroom— or, Carter supposed, the bedroom he used when he was wearing this form— nevertheless made him turn red, his heart pounding in his ears. It was as luxurious as Carter would expect, gilded and jewelled at every opportunity, full of lush dark velvet and fine mahogany furniture. Nyarlathotep set him down on the foot of the bed— _his_ bed— and stood over him for a moment, waiting for Carter to get settled.

“Do you like it?”

Carter blinked. “I— it’s quite nice, yes.”

“I thought you would.” Nyarlathotep leaned down a bit and pressed a kiss to Carter’s cheek. His skin was unnaturally hot, and a strange sense of electricity accompanied his touch, leaving a faint buzz on Carter’s skin when he pulled away. _Lightning in a bottle_.

“Yes, I rather am.” Nyarlathotep grabbed his wrists and pulled him up, abruptly, so that they were standing chest-to-chest. This close, Carter had to tilt his head far back to meet Nyarlathotep’s eyes, which left his neck exposed. He swallowed, and Nyarlathotep’s eyes flickered down to the motion of his throat, tracing it with razor precision.

They stood like that for what must have only been a few moments, but to Carter it felt like an infinity. Nyarlathotep’s gaze seemed like it was skewering him, pinning him to the bed behind him like a butterfly on a corkboard. He couldn’t stop thinking about how he must _look_ , from Nyarlathotep’s point of view— wide-eyed and small, terrified for his life, trembling and pathetic despite all his attempts to appear to the contrary. Such a tiny, fragile creature, so far below Nyarlathotep that Carter couldn’t begin to fathom what about him could possibly be worth notice to a creature as old as the universe, who could fit the Milky Way galaxy in the palm of his hand, who—

This train of thought was interrupted when Nyarlathotep released Carter’s wrists, bent down, and kissed him again.

This time was— different. Not rougher, per se, but more insistent. Nyarlathotep cupped Carter’s face in his hand and pulled his chin down, opening Carter’s mouth and running his tongue along the roof, and Carter was all of a sudden _very_ aware of the fact that he was kissing someone— some _thing—_ with teeth like a shark. He tried to pull away, panicking, but Nyarlathotep’s hand was on his back, pressing him in close, and then another pair of hands was at his shoulders, pushing his cardigan off his shoulders. Aware that that was several hands too many, Carter tried to look around— was there another person there?— but Nyarlathotep was still kissing him, more roughly now, and he couldn’t find a way to disentangle himself without risking his tongue getting bitten off.

The hands at Carter’s collar began to work on the buttons of his shirt, and Carter felt himself flush. He tried to speak, but Nyarlathotep seemed determined to kiss him until he passed out from lack of air— which was beginning to become a pressing issue, now that Carter thought of it. He struggled against the preternaturally strong hand on his back, kicking his legs furiously as his oxygen supply ran out, and eventually Nyarlathotep pulled back, though with evident reluctance.

“What are you doing?” Carter demanded, bringing his free hand up to push away the hands at his collar— which evidently were Nyarlathotep’s, now that Carter could get a good look at him. He looked vaguely like one of the Hindu gods he’d seen in the Asian Art gallery at the MFA back home— beautiful, but inhuman, in a way that sent a shiver down Carter’s spine. He seemed to be taller now, as well; Carter reckoned that the top of his head might reach Nyarlathotep’s sternum, at best.

Nyarlathotep continued to undo the buttons on his shirt, despite Carter’s efforts to dissuade him. His hands worked smoothly without him even looking at them, keeping his gaze fixed on Carter. “Undressing you.”

Carter felt himself flush hotter. “Well, I don’t want you to.”

Nyarlathotep frowned down at him, stopping momentarily. “Were you not clear on what I was proposing?”

“You—” Carter’s voice stopped in his throat, and he coughed self-consciously. “You were, but you can do it without taking off my clothes. All my clothes, I mean. You can leave my shirt on.”

“No,” said Nyarlathotep pleasantly, and went back to the buttons.

Carter squirmed, though the hands on his back and his shoulder held him firm, unable to get away. “What do you mean, no?”

“You’re awfully beautiful,” Nyarlathotep said, pushing Carter’s now-unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders and staring at his bare chest with something very akin to fascination. “I’d prefer to see all of you, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind.”

“Unfortunate.” Nyarlathotep bent down so that his face was on a level with Carter’s and began working on his pants. Carter, if such a thing were possible, flushed even hotter.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, in an attempt to distract himself from the feeling of Nyarlathotep’s long, elegant fingers brushing against his stomach. “I mean— surely you could have your pick of willing humans, or willing— members of other species. And I can’t imagine that I would be able to offer you much—” Nyarlathotep glanced up at Carter, amusement in his eyes, and a fresh wave of blood rushed to Carter’s face— “much of anything, small and insignificant as I must seem to you. Is it just to torture me? Is that it?”

Instead of answering, Nyarlathotep stripped him of the rest of his clothes in a brisk, matter-of-fact motion, and stood back up to his full height. Carter fought the urge to shrink away; he felt so profoundly _vulnerable_ like this that he almost couldn’t bear the idea of being looked at, let alone touched. Nyarlathotep reached out and tipped his chin up with forefinger and thumb, very gently, insisting that Carter meet his eyes. They were darker than any human’s, a dizzyingly vivid ink-black that made Carter’s head spin.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Carter told him.

A smile played around Nyarlathotep’s curved lips. “You want to get back to the Dreamlands. I want…” his eyes flickered up and down Carter’s body, appraising him in the manner of an art collector “...something in return. Fair is fair, Randolph Carter.”

“Yes, but why—” Nyarlathotep cut him off by pushing two of his fingers into Carter’s mouth. Too surprised to resist, Carter stared up at him with what must have been an expression of betrayal.

“I like you, Randolph Carter,” Nyarlathotep murmured, pressing down on Carter’s tongue almost hard enough to make him gag with one finger and running the other along the inside of his cheek. “You entertain me. Is that not enough?”

Carter glared.

Nyarlathotep’s lip quirked. “I suppose not.” Without warning, he pulled his fingers out, grabbed Carter by the waist, picked him up with that same effortlessness, and carried him up onto the bed, so that Carter’s head rested against the pillows. It was a very strange movement, and one that shouldn’t have been possible, for a human; more of that reality-bending, where the contours of the world moved to fit Nyarlathotep’s will. Carter shivered at the implications of such an ability.

“Does it scare you, that I can do such things?” asked Nyarlathotep, sitting next to Carter on the bed. “I assure you I have no intention to hurt you.”

“If you did, would you tell me?”

Nyarlathotep reached around Carter and pulled him close, so that Carter was essentially in his lap. “No,” he murmured, and slipped his hand between Carter’s legs.

Carter— well, he would be lying if he said that some part of him, beneath the more sensible bits of his brain that were occupied with existential terror, was not enjoying himself. Maybe even most of him, if he was being entirely honest. It had been nearly five years since Harley, and Carter was certainly not one for casual engagements, and— Nyarlathotep was admittedly very good with his hands. Carter’s heart was still pounding (though at this point, he suspected, not entirely from fear), but he did his best to relax into Nyarlathotep’s arms. settling himself against the fine satin of the god’s robes. This was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not, so he might as well try to enjoy himself.

Which was not exactly difficult. Whatever else he might be, Nyarlathotep was, predictably, _very_ good at this. Carter sighed in pleasure, letting his hips buck up into Nyarlathotep’s hand, and was rewarded with a gentle laugh that he felt resonate through his body where it rested against Nyarlathotep’s. He reached down and grasped both of Carter’s ankles, holding his legs apart at an angle just barely verging on the uncomfortable, and stroked Carter’s hair with his remaining hand. Carter leaned back against him, wincing and gasping, and tried his hardest to be quiet— a leftover habit from his days in a thin-walled college dorm room with Richard.

“Do you like that?” Nyarlathotep murmured, leaning down so close that his lips brushed Carter’s ear, and Carter nodded. He was being— surprisingly gentle, for a malicious deity taking his due from a human. Carter hadn’t expected to be asked what he _liked_.

“I’m not a brute, Randolph Carter,” Nyarlathotep said, a hint of offense creeping into his voice. “The reason I wanted to do this in exchange for letting you back to the Dreamlands—” the hand between Carter’s legs moved faster, and Carter, despite himself, moaned— “was because I wanted to pleasure you. Specifically you, mind. If I were out to satisfy myself, as you said, there are any number of willing humans I might choose.”

“Why—” Nyarlathotep pressed down, and Carter had to bite back something that he suspected would have been mortifyingly close to a squeak— “why me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nyarlathotep pleasantly. “I just think you’re amusing, I suppose. I wanted to see what you look like when you’re too overwhelmed to speak.”

Carter felt his face grow hot— or hotter, rather— and Nyarlathotep, perhaps sensing it, drew his hand away. Carter whined, jerking his hips, and Nyarlathotep wrapped an arm around his stomach, holding them down. “There, there. Be patient, little dreamer.” He murmured a word in a language Carter didn’t recognize, and reached down between Carter’s legs again. Carter tensed up, and Nyarlathotep stopped for a moment. “Relax, darling. I promise you I know what I’m doing.”

He did, in fact, know what he was doing. When Richard had fingered him open he’d always been too eager, forgetting how inexperienced Carter was; when Harley had done it he’d either been too hasty from nerves or too tentative, scared that he would hurt Carter and Carter would be too shy or too worried to tell him. Nyarlathotep was gentle but firm, again as though he’d memorized the topography of Carter’s body a long time previously. Carter twitched in Nyarlathotep’s arms as he added a second finger, then a third. Christ, he was good. Everything he did seemed choreographed, meticulously calculated to feel as good as possible, without ever being mechanical or anything less than perfectly graceful. It was a trial to keep himself from screaming in pleasure every time Nyarlathotep’s fingers shifted so much as a millimeter, and Carter found himself biting down so hard on his lower lip that he tasted blood.

“You can be as loud as you like,” said Nyarlathotep conversationally. “The palace is empty, and there’s no one around for hundreds of miles. You remember from the flight over the first time you were here, I’m sure.”

Carter took a deep breath. “I can— manage, thank you,” he gasped out.

“Just so you know it’s an option.” Nyarlathotep pulled his fingers out, still dripping with what Carter presumed was some kind of oil, and wiped them on the bedcovers. “You seem a little tense.”

“I wonder why,” said Carter, as Nyarlathotep slid him off of his lap and back onto the bed. “Couldn’t be fear for my life, I’m sure.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“I don’t think you were telling the truth.”

Nyarlathotep’s eyes glittered in the dim candlelight. “I guess we’ll just have to see,” he murmured, kneeling between Carter’s legs. He was still wearing his robes, though he was grasping the hem as though planning to hitch them up to the waist— it was probably some kind of power thing, that he wanted to be fully clothed while Carter was naked. Carter bit his lip.

“Will you— will you at least be gentle?” he asked, looking up at Nyarlathotep.

“No promises,” said Nyarlathotep. In one of those motions too quick to be human, he grabbed Carter by his upper thighs, pulled him forwards and upwards, and thrust himself inside Carter.

Carter had thought he’d been doing an admirable job at keeping control of himself, one that he might be able to keep up for the rest of the night and perhaps even deny Nyarlathotep the pleasure of seeing him lose himself completely. Unfortunately, he hadn’t anticipated how it would feel to actually— well, to be vulgar, how it would feel to actually be fucked by an Outer God. Carter had a moment of shocked silence, in which all he could do was gasp for air, and then he _screamed_.

It felt as though he were being electrified, but from the inside. Carter squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his legs around Nyarlathotep’s back, clutching at his shoulders hard enough to leave deep scratches on an ordinary human. He felt Nyarlathotep laugh— laugh at _him_ , presumably— and screamed louder, held on tighter. They were still upright, Nyarlathotep kneeling and holding Carter close, Carter clinging to him for dear life. Even like this, with limited leverage, every thrust felt like it might be the one to kill him, overwhelm his fragile human body and shatter him, burn him, obliterate him like Semele at the sight of Zeus. He’d never felt such pleasure.

“Hold me tighter,” Carter gasped, and Nyarlathotep did, crushing Carter against his body with preternatural strength. Carter felt a sickening crack resound through his chest, and realized in an oddly dissociated way that that was probably one of his ribs. What with the overload of sensation, the pain didn’t even register, just a strange feeling of breakage. Nyarlathotep presumably felt it too, and only squeezed him tighter. _Crack_.

Carter counted four of his ribs, and a significant period of time without close-to-adequate oxygen, before Nyarlathotep threw him down on his back and continued with him like that. Two of his hands held Carter’s wrists to the bed, pinning him down; the other pair grasped his hips, pulling him upwards to get a better angle. Carter threw his head back and arched his spine, legs locked around Nyarlathotep’s back, screaming at such a volume that he was surprised his throat didn’t begin to bleed.

“Enjoying yourself?” Nyarlathotep asked from above him, grinning wickedly. Carter couldn’t even get control of himself enough to nod, never mind speak, but he did his best to mentally project that he was indeed enjoying himself. Nyarlathotep’s smile grew wider. He leaned down slowly, delicately, and bit the side of Carter’s neck. As Carter watched, fascinated and horrified, he licked the blood from the wound with a slow deliberateness and sucked on the skin around it, hard enough to leave a mark.

“Do you like that?” he murmured in Carter’s ear, and Carter nodded frantically.

Carter couldn’t— couldn’t say how long it went on like that. Time seemed to blur and twist, an unimportant measure when the only thing that mattered was the way Nyarlathotep was making him feel, biting and kissing his neck and chest, fucking him steadily, holding him with such a firm grip that Carter felt he might as well be constrained with iron bonds. Periodically, one of Nyarlathotep’s hands would leave his hips and touch him up further, always withdrawing at the last possible moment before it would have made him climax. Carter squeezed his eyes shut and squirmed in frustration, but Nyarlathotep just grinned down at him, fanged smile dripping with sugary condescension.

At some point— maybe minutes in, maybe hours— Carter noticed a— a change, in Nyarlathotep’s form. Not in the way he felt, but in the way he looked, though Carter couldn’t quite put a name to it, and in the way the air around him felt— it became hotter, closer, and Carter felt his glasses begin to fog up.

“What—” he managed to get out, and then Nyarlathotep...changed.

Or— maybe “changed” was the wrong word. That implied some sense of stability at the outcome, some end goal, which this was not. In half a second, Nyarlathotep went from a stable, solid form that only moved and changed in the sense that humans did, to something else. Something...vaguely human-shaped, yes, but larger, amorphous and shifting, swirling in colors Carter had never seen before— now resembling a human, now something Carter couldn’t even begin to put a name to. He screamed and struggled, but Nyarlathotep still had his hands pinned and his hips held and in any case this new...form was much larger than Carter, and could overpower him even more easily than before.

 _Do you not like me like this, Randolph Carter?_ The words circled around Carter’s brain in a decidedly uncanny fashion, and even held as tightly as he was he jerked in surprise.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Carter squeaked.

 _No, it wasn’t, was it?_ murmured Nyarlathotep, and reached down with some...appendage, clawed and chitinous, that changed to something resembling a human hand as it stroked Carter’s cheek.

“Change back,” Carter demanded, as the hand on his cheek shifted back to a claw and dug into his skin.

 _I don’t think I’ll do that, actually_ , said Nyarlathotep, and resumed thrusting into Carter.

Looking back on it later, Carter did have to wonder how it was that whatever non-human monstrosity Nyarlathotep had changed into managed not to break him, tear him apart from the inside— it certainly felt like it might, at any rate, pleasurable as it was. He couldn’t see past it, but he couldn’t look at it for too long either, or it would make his head spin. Every form in the succession was beautiful, but in the way that angels were beautiful in the Hebrew scriptures. Unbeholdable beautiful, mind-shattering beautiful, _Do-not-be-afraid_ beautiful.

Carter couldn’t... quite tell, exactly, how Nyarlathotep was feeling in this form. His faces changed too quickly to discern any kind of expression, and whatever body language he might have had was obscured in the constant shapeshifting. Nevertheless, Carter could sense, eventually, that he was close— that both of them were close, though it was significantly less difficult to tell with himself. He was shaking from it, at this point.

“Nyarlathotep, I—” he gasped, in one of the rare moments when he was capable of speech.

 _Yes, my dreamer?_ Nyarlathotep murmured in his mind, and Carter arched his back at the possessive. (There would be time to feel shame about that later.) _Did you want something?_

“Touch me,” Carter breathed, and Nyarlathotep obliged, slipping something between his legs that was alternately a hand, a claw, and a tentacle. Carter yelped in surprise at the feeling of it, alien but...good, somehow, needed. It shifted and changed around him, complementing whatever Nyarlathotep was doing intentionally, and with effort Carter stopped screaming for long enough to moan. “Yes, God, that’s—”

_That’s good?_

“Better than good, Nyarlathotep, oh—”

Nyarlathotep pressed harder. _Eager little thing, aren’t you?_

“I am, I am, I’m yours, I’m yours—” Carter had no idea where _that_ had come from, but he could worry about it later. Right now tears were beginning to cloud his vision, and he was starting to feel that if he didn’t come in the next minute he might _actually_ die. “Please, Nyarlathotep, I need—”

At which point Carter’s orgasm sucker-punched him in the stomach, and his vision went white for a moment. It didn’t— didn’t feel remotely like any climax he’d had before, so much as it felt like his whole body seizing up in pleasure, as though someone had zapped the relevant part of his brain with as much electricity as he could possibly handle without dying. Carter was surprised that he didn’t pass out. He’d certainly fainted before from much less, and this was several orders of magnitude more intense than anything he’d ever experienced.

He wasn’t sure how he knew that Nyarlathotep hadn’t climaxed as well, but he did. There was nothing in the way of a...physical indicator, in the sense that there would be with a human form, but Nyarlathotep squeezed Carter’s hips so hard that Carter worried for a moment that he’d snap him in two, and lifted him by the waist so that, still pinned by his wrists, he was arched up above the bed at a painful angle. Pressed closer to Nyarlathotep’s body than he’d been before, Carter could feel it shift and change above him— clothes appearing and disappearing, limbs and contours momentary at best, form altering more quickly than ever. Still experiencing the aftershocks of his own hyper-intense orgasm, the sheer volume of sensation pushed Carter over the emotional edge, and he began to cry.

 _What’s the matter, little human?_ Nyarlathotep purred, seeming somehow completely in control of himself despite the increased pace of his shapeshifting. _Too much?_

Carter opened his mouth to try and respond in between sobs, but he wasn’t even capable of moving beyond the automatic, much less speaking.

 _Cat got your tongue, Randolph Carter?_ Nyarlathotep reached down and pushed a surprisingly stable tentacle, black and sinuous, past Carter’s lips, wrapping it around his tongue from the base. Carter stared up at him, terrified, vision clouded by tears.

 _Please_ , Carter begged him silently. _I finished, I’m done, let me go_.

 _What, and leave myself frustrated?_ Nyarlathotep tugged on his tongue, and Carter squeezed his eyes shut.

 _At least stop shapeshifting_ , Carter pleaded. _I can’t take it, it’s too much, I can’t— ah!_ Nyarlathotep had resumed moving the hand between his legs, and Carter struggled desperately, arching his back further despite the protests of his shoulders to try and get away. _Please, please, you said you just wanted to pleasure me, I can— reciprocate, if you want, just let go, let me go—_

 _I also said I wanted to see what you looked like overwhelmed_ , Nyarlathotep murmured, and lowered Carter back onto the bed, releasing his wrists. Carter grabbed at his shoulders, holding on to his shifting back, feeling the texture beneath his fingers change from scales to fur to skin to...something he had no name for. He thought, in a brief moment of clarity, of the story of Tam Lin— how Janet had held her lover as the Fairy Queen changed him from form to form quicker than she could comprehend. _Hold me fast and fear me not_ , wasn’t that the line? Well.

 _Besides, I’m enjoying this too much to restrain myself to a single form_ , Nyarlathotep said conversationally. _And you are too, aren’t you? Aren’t you, little human?_

_I—_

_Tell me the truth, Randolph Carter_.

 _I am_ , Carter conceded, and he was. As painfully overwhelming as the sensations assaulting his sanity were, they were also incomprehensibly pleasurable; if Nyarlathotep had listened to him and stopped, Carter had to admit that a not-insignificant part of him would have been disappointed. _Just— I don’t know how long I can handle it for_.

 _Relax, my dreamer. I’m not planning on breaking you_.

 _You wouldn’t tell me if you were_ , thought Carter, and was rewarded with a jagged, electric, honey-sweet laugh that curled snake-like around his mind.

It was rather sudden, when Nyarlathotep did finish. Carter hadn’t been expecting it, or...maybe he had, but didn’t know it. Time meant even less now than earlier; the only valuable metric was the rate at which Nyarlathotep changed from one form to another, sometimes so fast they visually blurred together and sometimes so slow that Carter could almost wrap his head around each in turn. He had it in his head that Nyarlathotep might shift faster and faster the closer he got to climax, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. One moment he was turning from form to form easily as flowing water under Carter’s hands, the next things...changed.

To Carter, it almost felt like he’d come for a second time. The sheer intensity of what Nyarlathotep must have been feeling bled out of him in waves, coloring Carter’s perceptions overwhelmed and his vision a foreign color he’d never seen before, making the very air around them shudder. Or— maybe less the air and more the fabric of space, vibrating like a plucked string, rippling like a pond someone had tossed a pebble into. Nyarlathotep clutched Carter tightly to his chest, holding him closer than ever, and Carter— felt his ribcage _bend_ , in a way it should by no means have been able to, to accommodate the crushing force.

“Jesus, Nyarlathotep—” he managed to gasp out, before Nyarlathotep sank his teeth into the meat of Carter’s shoulder, and Carter _screamed_.

 _Sorry, darling_ , came Nyarlathotep’s mental voice, scratchy with radio static, as he slowly withdrew his mouth from Carter’s skin, leaving a bloody mess behind. Even only seeing it in his peripheral vision, Carter could make out the vivid pulse of what must have been an artery, and for a moment his head went light and woozy. When Nyarlathotep pulled back, Carter’s blood dripping from his mouth, Carter saw that though the edges and seams of his form were slightly blurred and ill-knit together, little bits of starless dark showing through them, he’d come back to the form Carter knew best, the beautiful pharaoh he’d first encountered here on Kadath.

“ _Thank_ you,” Carter sighed as Nyarlathotep pulled out of him. He was still fully dressed in those impeccable satin robes; his hair was entirely unruffled, as delicately combed and styled as it had been at the beginning of the evening, and his makeup remained perfect as ever. The only thing marring the image was the blood dripping from his mouth, though when he smiled his teeth were, somehow, still a flawless white.

“Of course,” Nyarlathotep purred, and retreated from Carter to give him a chance to collect himself. It was at this point that Carter looked about himself, and realized that what had previously been a luxurious royal bedchamber was...no longer that.

Carter couldn’t quite describe it. It was as though— as though everything had _dissolved_ , somehow, all the contours of reality that had previously made up the room, and now all but the bed Carter lay on was alien and mutable, shifting about itself in colors Carter had no names for. Cautiously, Carter sat up, swung his feet over the side of the bed and tested the floor. That, at least, seemed solid, though it had the same bizarre appearance as the rest of the room. He stood up, walked to where the wall had been, testing the new shape of the world. It...gave, when he pushed at it and walked through it, but it left an odd dissociative feeling on his skin that tingled like numerous tiny jolts of electricity.

“Strange, isn’t it?” came a voice from beside Carter, and he looked up with a start to see Nyarlathotep, standing casually next to him, looking out at the infinity of disarticulated space.

“What did you do?” asked Carter, voice trembling ever so slightly.

Nyarlathotep waved a hand, disturbing the air ever so slightly and sending a few of those...things drifting off into the distance. “This particular reality is quite fragile, you see. It can only sustain shocks of a certain magnitude before it begins to lose its integrity. Certain phenomena— merging black holes, combining quasars, collisions of very dense objects— cause...ripples, I think would be the word, in space-time. Little perturbations that affect its stability. Far too small for you to perceive, most of the time, but they do occur. Larger shocks, though…” Nyarlathotep gestured out beyond them. “Things get a bit strange. Space-time becomes disarticulate, loses its ability to form shapes in the way that you would define them. The analogy that comes to mind is clay— you can make shapes out of it, confine it to certain forms, but ultimately it’s still just clay, and with enough force you can return it to its primordial _lack_ of form.”

“Unless you fire it.”

Nyarlathotep looked down at him in amusement. “Yes, but that’s a bit above you, don’t you think?”

Carter bit his tongue to stop himself responding to the condescension. “So are you saying your climax just...disarticulated, or whatever it is, my entire universe?”

Nyarlathotep scoffed. “No. Of course not.”

“Oh.” Carter looked out, trying to trace the path of one of the strange shapes with eyes. It proved more difficult than he’d expected, and made his head hurt with the effort. “That’s good.”

“Just local space-time. About two-thirds of the Milky Way, I think.”

Carter blanched. “I’m sorry, _what—_ ”

“Oh, calm down. It’s entirely temporary. Do you really have such a low opinion of me, Randolph Carter, that you think I’d destroy the better part of a galaxy just so I could pleasure the both of us?”

“Yes,” said Carter truthfully.

“That’s fair.” Nyarlathotep wrapped an arm around Carter’s shoulders and pulled him in close, in a surprisingly affectionate gesture. “But it _is_ only temporary. I can reassemble your reality whenever I choose.”

“Reassuring,” murmured Carter, leaning his head on Nyarlathotep’s chest and watching the congeries of shapes drift by. As he did so, though, an idea struck him. “Hey— if you just dissolved my local reality, then why am I still...not alive, I suppose, but here?”

Nyarlathotep reached over and stroked Carter’s cheek, tilting his face up gently. “I was being quite careful with you, little dreamer.”

Carter, despite everything, blushed at the diminutive. “Well— thank you.”

“Of course.” Nyarlathotep’s hand trailed down from Carter’s cheek to his shoulder, which was still bleeding slightly, though in the tingly aftermath of both of their orgasms Carter had hardly registered the pain. “Would you like me to heal you?”

“Yes, thank you.” Carter braced himself for...something, he had no idea what supernatural healing would feel like, but he assumed it would be painful. But it didn’t come— just a matter-of-fact, momentary vanishing of the growing ache in his shoulder and ribs and abdomen, as if, rather than knitting back together, all of his injuries had simply disappeared, as if they were never there at all. Another instance of reality reforming itself to Nyarlathotep’s will, easily as anything. Carter looked down at himself, assessing— he felt fine, and all of the open wounds, broken bones, and internal bleeding seemed to have been resolved, but he noticed that he was still dotted with oddly-shaped bruises, including a pair wrapping around his hips in the shape of hands.

“Something to remember me by,” murmured Nyarlathotep, and in another of those instantaneous transitions Carter found himself fully clothed. Not in his clothes, though— Nyarlathotep had apparently put him in a pair of robes similar to the ones he himself was wearing, though Carter’s were a brilliant midnight blue, trimmed in radiant silver. They were surprisingly comfortable.

“Is this something to remember you by as well?” asked Carter, and Nyarlathotep smiled in response. “Thank you, at any rate. Though I’m not sure when I’ll have an opportunity to wear these.”

“I think you’ll be surprised how useful you find them,” said Nyarlathotep. “They’re quite the style in the courts of the northern Dreamlands at the moment.”

Carter’s heart thrilled. “You’re actually going to send me back?”

“I’m not a liar, Randolph Carter.” And sure enough, as Carter watched, the fluid space around them began to reconstitute itself into the bedchamber he remembered. It was a profoundly strange thing to watch, and Carter looked away, at Nyarlathotep, as it finished reforming. He seemed completely unhurried, displaying no real effort or strain as he remade the universe around them, and Carter was awed despite himself.

“Is it— is it difficult?” Carter asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.

“What, this?” The last little details of the room returned, the few straggling elements of interstitial space disappearing as they did so, and Nyarlathotep exhaled. “Not in the slightest. I create new universes as easily as you breathe, little human.”

Carter squared his shoulders as Nyarlathotep turned to face him, standing (for once) a normal distance away. “Are you ready for me to send you back?”

Carter swallowed. “Yes. Thank you. For—” he blushed again— “for this, as well as for sending me back. I did enjoy myself.”

A smile played about Nyarlathotep’s lips. “I thought so.” _And I don’t think this will be the last I see of you, Randolph Carter_ , he added silently.

“I—” Carter bit his lip. “All right. I’m ready.”

Nyarlathotep gave him one last toothy grin before he made a sharp gesture with both hands, said a word in a language Carter didn’t recognize, and sent him on his way.

Carter closed his eyes the moment he felt the tell-tale buzz that frequently accompanied teleportation begin to spread up his body from the soles of his feet, and kept them closed until it faded entirely. He knew from experience that it would allow him to get his bearings more easily if vision was the last sense he added.

It was rather chilly, Carter noted, and drafty— even the slight breeze cut right through the thin satin of his robes. Nyarlathotep must have set him down somewhere in the north, perhaps near Ilek-Vad from the sound of rushing water he could make out off in the distance. It smelled vaguely of salt and tar and pitch, increasing the likelihood that he was close to the great port city of the upper Dreamlands. Carter thought of the chowder they made in town, and of how starving he was— he had no idea how long he’d been with Nyarlathotep, and in any case physical exertion always made him hungry. He knew a lovely little tavern right next to the opera house that served the best in the city, he’d go there and have a long lunch. Breakfast. Whatever. Confident that he knew where he was, Carter opened his eyes.

His stomach dropped.

The vista before him was, to put it mildly, not Ilek-Vad. It wasn’t— wasn’t anywhere in the Dreamlands, not that Carter knew, and he’d travelled to most places within its bounds. The sky above was dull grey, and close in a claustrophobic manner that matched no sky Carter had ever seen; a green sun glowed faintly in the distance, casting the whole of the landscape in a pallid, sickly light. Carter stood on a terrace, made of polished onyx, with hundreds of steps that descended down to a blocky and windowless city spread out a dizzying distance below. It— the palace, at least, and almost certainly the city below as well— was far too large for humans, clearly built for creatures a hundred times Carter’s height or more.

Cautiously, Carter walked to the edge of the first step and peered down. Shallow compared to the size of everything else, it seemed to him like a cliff face, smooth and sheer and impassable. The extent of the drop made him nauseous, and he backed away quickly. Looking out and down was no better; Carter saw that, as if the mind-numbing alienness of the architecture of this place wasn’t enough, the streets were populated with its denizens, gigantic creatures for which Carter had neither words nor name. The steps seemed deserted for now, but Carter thought he saw a group of of them making their way towards where the last flight met the paved streets of the city.

Dizzied and near to fainting, Carter withdrew from the edge of the stair, and pressed his back to the guard wall. “This isn’t the Dreamlands!” he hissed through his teeth, trying out of instinct to be quiet, though he couldn’t imagine that the voice of a creature of his size would be noticeable, or even audible, to whatever strange beings dwelled here.

 _No?_ came the response, honeyed and sinister, twisting and twining around Carter’s mind. _I assure you, little dreamer, this is the Dreamlands. Or—_ a _Dreamlands, rather. You never specified which_.

Carter felt himself pale. He flashed back to a conversation he’d had with Kuranes, years ago, in the days when Kuranes had served as his mentor and his guide to the ins and outs of dreaming— about other Dreamlands of other planets, the alien fantasies of alien minds, separated from our own by great gulfs of interstellar space. Kuranes had told him that they did exist, inaccessible as they were for good reason, and—

“You bastard,” Carter breathed. “Take me back.”

 _Ah, ah. We made a deal_.

“You didn’t _tell_ me—”

 _Fair is fair, Randolph Carter_. A resounding thump shook the ground where Carter stood, and he looked around in terror, cowering against the wall. Another thump followed, in the pattern of humanoid footfalls, and Carter realized that someo— some _thing_ must be approaching the steps from inside the palace. He pressed himself against the wall and prayed that whatever it was didn’t look down.

 _Besides_ , continued Nyarlathotep in his mind, _you’re an awfully resourceful little creature. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I can’t_ wait _to see what it is_.

“Please, I— I’ll do anything you want, I’ll let you keep me on Kadath, have me as often as you like, I’ll let you use my body as an avatar, anything, anything you can think of, just _get me out of here_.” Carter was whispering frantically, eyes darting around for anywhere he might be able to hide. Everything he saw was so far away he was sure he would either be stepped on or noticed before he could reach it. He settled for staying still and quiet as he could, closing his eyes and trying his best to be as inconspicuous as possible.

 _Tempting_. Nyarlathotep laughed in his mind, a sweet, grating sound that made Carter wince. _But I think I want to see how you navigate the Dreamlands of Yuggoth first. It always amuses me so to watch you struggle_. _Tell you what, entertain me particularly well in the next couple hours, and I’ll consider taking you back to Kadath_.

Carter tried to still his breathing as the footsteps approached closer and closer. He could hear the thing’s robes, brushing delicately along the floor. If he opened his eyes he’d be able to see it.

 _Of course, I could just leave you here_ , mused Nyarlathotep. _I’m sure many of the rulers would be delighted to have such a prize curiosity as a human to call their own. That is, if one of them doesn’t accidentally crush you first_.

Carter closed his eyes tighter, trying to ignore the nauseating shaking of the ground at every one of the creature’s footfalls. “You’re horrible,” he whispered, as quietly and ferociously as he could.

 _Yes, I rather am_ , Nyarlathotep agreed. _Oh, would you look at that, it looks like they’re about to have a festival at the palace. How charming. I’m sure that will be fascinating to watch_.

“Nyarlathotep, please!” Carter cried out, throwing caution to the wind in desperation. Thankfully, his voice didn’t carry to the regal, alien figure now standing atop the terrace near Carter, nor the numerous other members of his species who were climbing the steps from the city below to, presumably, pay their respects.

Carter couldn’t see him, but he could tell, somehow, that Nyarlathotep was grinning in delight. The sense of his presence began to fade away as Carter edged along the wall to peer out at the rest of the terrace, judging his chances of dashing across it safe and unnoticed, but before it vanished entirely he heard, in dulcet tones of barely-suppressed laughter—

 _Good luck, Randolph Carter_.

**Author's Note:**

> to evandar: hi! i wanted to write you a treat as a thank you for writing some of my absolute _favorite_ discworld fic in the world (your polly/mal stuff, "nightgowns" in particular), and when i saw your letter on the spreadsheet, i jumped at the chance to write giftfic for probably my favorite ship in any fandom. i hope you like it!
> 
> to everyone else: i'm not a physicist by any means, but nyarlathotep's mini-monologue about two-thirds of the way through is based loosely on the concept of gravitational waves, which are actual things that do happen when extremely dense and massive objects collide, and which we've recently managed to detect, thanks to the work of LIGO (which won the nobel prize back in 2017). one of the women who worked on the project graduated from my college (and now teaches at MIT), and she gave a lecture to my astronomy class, which was supremely cool— though maybe not inspirational in quite the way she would have hoped. anyway, the only grav waves we think have happened are those resulting from the collisions of quasars and black holes that are only a couple times the mass of the sun, and they haven't managed to shake apart the fabric of the universe yet. what might happen when AGN black holes, which are millions or billions of times the mass of the sun and which live at the centers of galaxies, collide, we don't know. that part of the fic is entirely invented. long story short, though, the idea that a big enough shock can alter space-time isn't one i came up with.
> 
> the idea for this fic, funnily enough, came from an academic article (i know) that proposed that the silver key takes place directly after dream-quest, and nyarlathotep is responsible for locking carter out of the dreamlands. going off that, this fic takes place directly post-dream quest, and diverges from canon at the beginning of the silver key.
> 
> thanks to [cam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peternurphy) and [dia](http://jerrycornelius.tumblr.com) for brainstorming help.
> 
> the title, as in the epigraph, is from terry pratchett's novel _going postal._


End file.
